Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® World Elite™ Mastercard® (Citi AA) Review
2024.8 Update: The 75k offer is back now!
2024.6 Update: The 75k offer is expired. The current offer is 60k.
2024.3 Update: The 75k offer is back now! You can get 75,000 AA miles after spending $3500 in 4 months. This is the best offer in recent years.
Contents
Application Link
Benefits
- 75k offer: earn 75,000 AAdvantage Miles after spending $3,500 within the first 4 months. This is the best offer on this card.
- We value AA Miles at 1.5 cents/point (Airline Miles Value), so the 75k highest sign-up bonus is worth about $1,125! See A Beginner’s Guide to AA Miles to check for details about AA Miles.
- Earn 2x AAdvantage miles per $1 spent on Restaurants, Gas Stations, and eligible American Airlines purchases, 1x AAdvantage mile per $1 on other purchases.
- First checked bag free on domestic American Airlines flights for you and up to four companions.
- Earn $125 AA Flight Discount after spending $20k during cardmembership year.
- Priority boarding on American Airlines flights.
- 25% savings on eligible in–flight purchases using card.
- No foreign transaction fee.
Disadvantages
- $99 annual fee, but waived for the first year.
Recommended Application Time
- [8/65 Rule] You can apply for at most 1 Citi cards every 8 days, and at most 2 Citi cards every 65 days, no matter approved or not.
- [Updated] [1/48 Rule] The welcome bonus is not available if you have received a new account bonus for this card in the past 48 months.
- Citi values the number of recent hard pulls a lot, we recommend you apply when there’s less than 6 hard pulls in the past 6 months.
- We recommend you apply for this card after you have a credit history of at least one year.
Summary
The sign-up bonus is one of the best sign-up bonus, therefore it is worth applying for almost anyone who may use miles. However, the earnings rate is not impressive, which makes it hard to cover the $95 annual fee, unless you are willing to put $20k spend on the card to get the $125 Flight Discount. If you fly AA a lot so that the AA related perks make up the annual fee, this credit card is worth keeping. Otherwise you can consider downgrading it to some cards with no annual fee.
Related Credit Cards
- Citi AAdvantage MileUp
- Citi AAdvantage Platinum (this post)
- Citi AAdvantage Executive
- CitiBusiness AAdvantage Platinum
- Barclaycard AAdvantage Aviator Red
- Barclaycard AAdvantage Aviator Business
Recommended Downgrade Options
After Applying
- Call 888-201-4523 to check Citi application status.
- Citi reconsideration backdoor number: 605-331-1698. This is a so called “Citi EO” (Executive Office) phone number. This phone number is not designed to make reconsiderations, but the representatives are really helpful.